The Crash and Churn of Lawrence O'Donnell

Note from Senior Management: Lawrence O’Donnell and his brother Michael lived through a horrific accident this past April while on vacation. His initial rehab complete he returns to MSNBC this week. Veteran journalist Lloyd Grove of The Daily Beast interviews a man who now realizes a simple , powerful concept : we are indeed ‘lucky to be alive.’

In an exclusive interview, the MSNBC anchor Lawrence O’Donnell reveals how he survived a head-on car crash, and why afterwards he cut himself off from the negative litany of the news cycle.

“What a stupid way to die,” Lawrence O’Donnell thought to himself.

A split-second earlier, the host of MSNBC’s 10 p.m. program, The Last Word, had been gazing down at a map on his iPhone, following the progress of his taxi, a Chevy van, as he and his older brother Michael rode to dinner on the resort island of Tortola. It was around 7:45 p.m., Saturday, April 12, the start of what promised to be a lovely vacation in the British Virgin Islands with his big brother, a Boston lawyer.

The vacation didn’t happen. Instead, O’Donnell, 62, underwent a life-altering crucible that he’s still trying to make sense of, while figuring out how to explain it to viewers when he returns to his show on Monday night after two-and-a-half months off the air.

A former Senate staffer who subscribes to the truism that politics ain’t beanbag while displaying a decidedly jaundiced view of America’s fearless leaders, O’Donnell has a well-earned reputation for bared fangs and sharp claws (just ask some of his on-camera victims, like Herman Cain, Eric Cantor or Anthony Weiner). But after his brush with death, O’Donnell describes himself as newly empathetic, freshly sensitized to the world around him, and determined, more than ever, to accentuate the positive.